


The Taste of Lemons

by Lizardbeth



Category: Justified
Genre: Domestic Violence, F/M, Miscarriage
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-19
Updated: 2010-12-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 19:25:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/140830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lizardbeth/pseuds/Lizardbeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life didn't turn out quite the way Ava expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Taste of Lemons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [obsessivemuch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/obsessivemuch/gifts).



> Please note the tags - Ava's life isn't all sunshine and ponies. This story is based pretty much entirely on the pilot/short story "Fire in the Hole" and so has no spoilers for later in the series.
> 
> I hope this is at least close to what you wanted!

Raylan always lived down the street from her. When Ava was little it was no big thing. She knew he was there, she said hi and he said hi, and that was about it. But when she was twelve, swinging in the front porch swing and drinking lemonade, Raylan walked past.

The sun was low and orange and cast a real pretty light on everything. Maybe that was why she saw him in a new way.

Raylan was older, in high school. He saw her there on the porch and he nodded and raised a hand. "Hey, Ava."

For the first time around him, her voice got caught in her throat as she looked at him.

How come she'd never seen how handsome he was? How tall he'd gotten? How well he fit into those jeans? He came up to the fence and leaned on it, all casual, and she could see a gleam of sweat where his shirt opened at the neck.

She stared and had to cough a bit, before she called back, "Hi, there, Raylan." Then feeling especially daring, she called, "You want some lemonade?"

He refused politely enough and waved to her, and she watched him walk away.

And having seen it, she couldn't unsee it. In her own bed at night, with the windows wide open to catch any bit of a breeze, she would draw lazy patterns in her own sweat on her skin and think of him.

* * *

That crush didn't really go away, but she got older and there were boys her own age plenty eager to find out what was under her skirt.

Bowman Crowder was one of them. He was on the football team, she was a cheerleader, and it seemed like it was meant to be.

But it was a basketball game where she looked at the second row, where Bowman was sitting with his big brother Boyd, and she saw Raylan again, sitting next to Boyd.

Raylan's eyes were on her, as if suddenly he saw her, the same way she'd seen him that evening four years ago. She smiled at him and shook her pom-poms, knowing her figure was something all the boys looked at now. She cheered and when they did the dance at half-time, she knew his eyes stayed on her.

After the game, she was still in her outfit when she met the boys. Bowman tried to introduce them, "This is my girl, Ava."

"Oh, me and Raylan lived on the same street, Bowman," she said. "We've known each other forever."

Bowman didn't like the look they exchanged and his hand was too tight on her arm. "C'mon, Ava, they're waitin' for us." He pulled her away and she waved goodbye to Raylan, wishing she could stay a little longer.

That was the first time Bowman hurt her, but certainly not the last.

* * *

Bowman was gonna wear Kentucky colors and then go pro. That was the plan, and she thought he had a good chance. And who wouldn't want to be the wife of a Cowboys player?

So she said yes and they had a little wedding. But Kentucky didn't call. Nobody called. And even though Bowman swore he'd never dig coal like everybody else in town, that was what he did.

It turned him surly and he drank. Somehow it all became her fault. "Why you gotta hold me back, Ava? If it weren't for you, I'd be in Lexington right now." Or Dallas. Or wherever. Anywhere but Harlan County.

Only once she shouted back at him - "If it weren't for me, you'd still be exactly right here, Bowman Crowder."

He didn't want to hear that, so he smacked her. She fell back against the kitchen counter and stared at him, her hand cradling her cheek. It was throbbing.

"Oh baby, I’m sorry," he rushed up and started to try to kiss it away. "I didn't meant it, I'll not do it again, I swear to God."

Even at the time, she knew it was a lie.

* * *

When she made up her mind to leave him, she had a job at the salon. She knew she could go it alone, and she was resolved. She packed up some clothes and a few things in a suitcase and went for one last day at the salon to set Mrs. Cartwright's hair for the week and tell Betty, the salon owner, goodbye.

But she didn't account for everybody knowing everybody's business, and how her taking a suitcase to her last day on the job would cause talk. And so Bowman showed up to the salon, furious. He told Betty that she was quittin', and he was taking her home. He grabbed her and yanked her outside, slamming her into the car. "Where you goin', Ava?" He opened the suitcase and dumped it out, right there on Oak Avenue.

She didn't dare look, but she could feel people watching all around as she knelt to try to gather it all up again. "Bowman..."

"Everything all right, Ava?" Betty asked, braver than Ava could be.

"Shut up, you bitch," Bowman said, except he used a word for colored that made Ava even more embarrassed and want to get out of there and never show her face again.

She looked up, not quite at Betty's face, and said, "I --I gotta go. I'm -- I'm sorry." She meant not just for Bowman's language but for everything.

Betty nodded, looking sad. "You need anything, Ava, you let me know. Take care of yourself."

"Mind your own business," Bowman snapped at her, and shoved Ava into the passenger seat, even though she hadn't finished picking up her things.

They peeled away from the curb, and he shouted at her all the way home. "You think you can just take off on me? You think there's anyplace you can go that I can't find you?"

Ava pressed against the door of the car, her heart hammering a million miles an hour, knowing what he was going to do when they got inside the house.

She was right. She heard the words coming from her, pouring out like water, "I won't do it again, please don't." But he didn't listen, and for the first time, she was the one saying she was sorry afterward, not him.

He let out a breath and looked down at her, with a curled lip of disdain. "Get yourself cleaned up," he told her. "You look like a whore."

* * *

'Course life wasn't all bad, nothing ever was. They had their good times, too, and people can get used to even the bad times, with a promise of good times to come. She was excited when she realized she was pregnant, at least at first, since she thought it might make everything better. And it seemed to, for awhile. Bowman was excited and happy, and said she'd finally done something right. But all too soon he started to check out the price of diapers in the store and realize adding another mouth to feed was going to make it even harder to make ends meet. He kept drinking and yelling at her for being lazy, when half the time she was exhausted all the time.

When she was standing there, welts on her back from his belt, and she felt blood between her thighs, there was a strange feeling deep inside. Not the cramping, she knew what that had to be, but in her heart, as if there was a snake there, searching for a way out of a box.

"The baby, the baby's dying," she said, holding her lower belly, which had barely begun to swell.

He rushed her to the hospital, but they lived far away and she knew it was over before they got to the parking lot.

In her hospital bed, after the doctor told them what she already knew, Bowman told her it was her fault. "If you hadn't been so stupid and just done what you were told, this wouldn't have happened."

She lay there in silence, letting his words wash over her, and she had a hand where her baby used to be. And she knew a truth he could never change with any of his words or his beatings, or nothing:

He had killed her baby.

* * *

He was good to her when she went home. Not because he was sorry - though he said he was - but because he knew the hospital people had seen the marks on her skin. She now had witnesses and notes in a file someplace. One of the nurses had asked, very gently, if she wanted to talk to the police, but had not been surprised when Ava refused.

But gradually normal restored itself. And yet nothing was quite the same. She didn't feel the same now.

Yet when she saw the news report of the elephant in the circus who went beserk and stampeded down a street in Missouri, she understood how that animal felt.  
There was a timer inside her heart, ticking down to a bomb.

Every smack, every push, every time she felt any fear, seconds fell off the clock.

Then, he pushed her and she fell against the stove and hit her head. The pain was like lightning, and for a moment she was both dizzy and sick to her stomach. Her head seemed filled with knives, it all hurt so bad.

She stayed on that floor and looked up at Bowman, and though she didn't speak, she knew the clock had just run down to zero.

That was the last time he hurt her. Never again.

* * *

"I'm gonna shoot ya, dummy." And she did.

Then he was dead, and she realized that she should've put down towels or something, because his blood made quite a mess on the dining room floor.

She wanted to be sorry. She'd just shot and killed a man, after all. Her husband, at that. Hell, she wanted to be glad. He'd killed her baby, almost killed her. But she was mostly just relieved as she picked up the phone to call 911.

"This is Ava Crowder," she told them. "I just shot Bowman but it ain't an emergency, because I killed him. I don't really give a damn that I'm telling you this, because I did it. Bastard had it coming."

She left him where he was, and wondered if she should start putting the food away. Maybe she should give it to the church, because she was never gonna touch it.

* * *

So Bowman was gone, and good fucking riddance. But she didn't feel quite... right. Somehow.

It wasn't regret. She wouldn't have shot him with his own gun if she'd regret his death. It was more a slow wondering of what the hell she was gonna do. She could end up in jail, which wasn't all that much of a big deal, since she'd do it all again.

Then Raylan Givens came up her walk. He had on a tan cowboy hat and a jacket, and pants that she was too much a woman not to check out everything they were showing. He had hardly changed at all since last she'd seen him. He was still so good-looking it made her all melty on the inside.

Then she kissed him hello - just because she could. Because Bowman was dead and she could kiss anyone she God-damn well wanted, including Raylan Givens, who she'd wanted to kiss when she was twelve years old.

He kissed her back, and she smiled. She tasted his lips again, and when she went to freshen up, she decided to go as far as she felt like, so she put on a towel and made sure he was looking at her.

And in the shower she started to laugh to herself out of the pure joy of it. Bowman was dead, she was on her own, and Raylan was in her front hall, waiting to talk to her.

After way too long, this was what freedom tasted like.


End file.
